On the Guardian Unlimited site, there is an interview by Stephen Moss with Marina Lewycka, author of "A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian," which has become a world-wide hit. According to the article:
"Before Tractors, the only creative work she had had published was a poem in an Arts Council magazine about 30 years ago. Had she ever doubted that her dream would come true? "I doubted it all the time," she says, "but writing was a compulsion. Lots of very good writers never get published, and that could easily have happened to me. People think that good writers will always come out in the end, but I don't believe that." She says she had reached the point where she barely discussed her writing with her husband, a mining consultant, or grown-up daughter. "When you've been doing it for as long as that, it gets a bit embarrassing, so you don't talk about it very much."
Marina Lewycka's book was rejected 36 times before she finally found a publisher at the age of 58.
Keep writing!
In the Palm Springs publication, Bottom Line, there is an interview with digital artist Dan Irvine (that's not one of his images to the left, I'm just using this one to illustrate the category). Although he's had several shows, he finds that the art scene has not been too receptive to digital art.